Fast Key Poster Designs

When it comes to designing posters, there are some that impact the world with dramatic imagery/typography and messages, and then there are those posters that are just fun and simple and get to the point.

I found these posters in various places such as design magazine, websites and I even noticed them up on the walls at my college at Natcoll. These trendy and smart posters were designed by Christopher David Ryan of Atmostheory and named this set of three posters the Commands set. Ryan has used the common commands that you can use on Mac computers and created a message into them. For example, with the first poster he has used the command + c short key and command + n short key symbols which stand for "copy" and "new" to communicate the message "Please do not copy, create something new". To me, this is thinking outside the box in a simple and effective way.

Reference.
Atmostheory (n.d). Retrieved May 30 2010.
http://www.atmostheory.com/project/commands/index.htm
Neatorama (2010). Retrieved May 30 2010.
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/04/mac-command-poster/
NotCot (2009) Retrieved May 30 2010.
http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/04/atmostheory-com.php
SwissMiss (2010) Retrieved May 30 2010.
http://www.swiss-miss.com/2008/04/command-posters.html

Computer Arts Magazine

Computer Arts magazine is a magazine targeted to graphic designers and anyone interested in computer arts. Each issue has a different theme related to design such as typography designs, vector imagery etc. and also supply tutorials on how to create certain designs. They also have another magazine series called Computer Arts projects which is more aimed to a smaller audience with more in-depth guidelines on designs for those with creative professions.

For me, these magazines were very useful as a graphic designer and had a lot of useful hints and tips in the tutorial sections. I also like how in the Projects magazines they have incorporated not just computerized designs and/or just the design part of the process in there tutorials, but have also applied some professional printing suggestions and more projects focused away from the computer.

Not only do they show how to do designs and talk about different designs produced, but they also talk about the design industry workforce such as How to build a better portfolio (Comp. Arts Issue 151) or discussions with other graphic designers about setting up your own studio (Comp. Arts Issue 150) which gives some good advice and exposure to the design workforce world instead of just the designing side of it all.

All in all, these magazines inform you and capture the important essences of graphic design in more depth and simple steps and also give you advice on things either on creating a design or the workforce.

Reference.
Stevie Spring (2008) Computer Arts. Retrieved May 28 2010.
Stevie Spring (2009) Computer Arts Projects. Retrieved May 28 2010.

Concert/Gig Typographic Posters.

Similar to typographic adverts, typographic gig posters have been wanting to grab enough attention from the general public. A lot of the posters that are for musical acts have become more creative and unique, or at least try to, with obscure characters, creatures and experimenting with different typefaces and/or typographic styles.


One poster going the typographic way is for the Japanese band, Guitar Wolf. This poster was designed by the people at Post Typography in which the poster is first viewed to look like the Japanese flag, with the band name and band member's name to form the circular part of the flag, but when you turn off the lights, the poster turns into a glow in the dark poster still keeping the circular typographic design in the middle of the page, but in black this time with hand drawn images around it. I think this is a brilliant and original idea for a promotional poster. I like how they've chosen to do it in a glow in the dark type of setting as a lot of the time, people would see this poster in the dark via other concerts, as many of these type of bands (grunge/punk) perform at night time.

Reference.
Post Typography (2009). Revisited May 27 2010. http://posttypography.com/site/index.php?action=portfolio&tid=6&iid=490

Typographic Advertisment.

In today's age, you have to be more and more creative with your advertisements as it's getting harder to attract attention to the everyday human being as the years go on. A lot of advertisements are leaning towards impact-like typographic design being creative with there type and using the mix of powerful imagery and typeface to grab attention. There are also some people who lean more towards simplicity in there advertisements but making the content of the advert more of a challenge or puzzle, which too grabs the attention the campaigners want.

One simple, yet effective advert that has used the puzzle effect is by IKEA. They have a three poster series designed by Matt Carvalho. The one above says "F nd The M ss ng P ece", which makes you wonder and think more capturing the audience and make them think for a moment longer than other adverts. I find this advert very creative and innovated because it's making the advert that little bit more interesting and fun, which can go back to what IKEA's furniture is like, and the designer has also taken out the "I" out of the words, which is very clever when you think about it as it's the first letter of the campaign they are promoting.


This other advertisement is on the new Raspberry Cocoa Cola range, which has the use of strong imagery and emerges with the typography in the advert. This is a clean and simple yet provides enough impact into the advert to capture the target audience, and also branching out to those who have always second thought about the brand as it's trying to show a healthier image towards there brand. I like this design because it's refreshing, refined and different to a lot of the Coca Cola adverts, but it does remind me of a yogurt company product.

Reference.
Best Photoshop Tutorials (2009) 40 Examples of Beautiful Typography in Advertising Design. May 27th 2010. http://bestphotoshoptutorials.net/2009/03/19/40-examples-of-beautiful-typography-in-advertising-design/
Graphic Design Blog (2009). 30 Typographic Print Ads. Retrieved May 27th 2010. http://designm.ag/inspiration/typography-advertising/

Type Faces.

In everyday life, we are faced with at least one typeface everyday either it be on a college work sheet, an e-mail from your boss or a poster on the streets. We are surrounded by many different typefaces, either it sans-serif, serif, script or a decorative style font, but what makes a good font face and what makes a typeface timeless? A well crafted typeface is something that "look right at home no matter what century we’re in" (25 classic fonts). In this blog post, I will post a few of the many timeless typefaces that have been created a long time ago, but are still well known and used in today's society.


The first typeface we will be looking at is Helvetica. This sans-serif based typeface was originally designed by Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann back in 1957. There aim was to produce a typeface that was "Faceless and timeless" (Creative, pge 337), which they successfully did. The first name of this typeface was called Neue Haas Grotesk though was changed to Helvetica two years later (1960). This font is definitely the most recognized font internationally and has been used for over 5 decades. I have started seeing this font being used in either bold or ultra light on a lot of new, young graphic designers on the internet, and this font has become part of a new trend in the internet world with graphic designs. All in all, a faceless font indeed, but I don't see this font dying down anytime soon.


The next font I will be looking at is GillSans. This sans-serif based typeface was designed by sculptor turned typographer, Eric Gill in 1926. This font is known the most for it's signage in the London Underground, which it was originally first designed for back in 1916. Though, around that time, was only a typeface with capital letters. The typeface was fully finished in 1927 after Gill got professional help via Monotype, back then a well known typographic company. This typeface is yet another timeless typeface which looks a bit more stylized than Helvetica, but is still a bit faceless in a way.


The last typeface that I will be talking about is Optima. Optima is a German typeface designed by Hermann Zapf back in 1950. This typeface is described as "a sans-serif font on a low calorie diet" (25 classic fonts) as the letter forms start off bold but then thin down and expand and the ends. This font has been used for almost anything, from book text to signage, as it is such a multi-purpose font. This font is a very versatile font to use, and I personally adore this font because I can use it either for a formal letter or a web design.

Resources.
Blog Spoon Graphics. (2009). Retrieved May 27 2010, from http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/25-classic-fonts-that-will-last-a-whole-design-career.
De Jong, C., Purvis, A. & Friedl, F. (2005). A Sourcebook of Classic and Contemporary Letterforms, Creative Type. London, England.

BAD Magazine Designs.

In a couple of blogs back, I talked about good magazine typography and layout, but in this blog, I will be talking and stating my opinion on some of the bad typography and layout in magazines.


New Idea and Woman's Day magazines. http://www.ademwithane.com

We all know of the trashy magazines such as New Idea and Woman's Day. These magazines are filled with inconsistent headings and the value of type is miss-treated to a poor standard, thus this is one basic term why they call it a trashy magazine. It's too image and (awful) type heavy and not exactly pleasing to the eye.

And it's not just from the awful use of heading typography that they use in the magazines, it's also in the bulk text itself which is horrid most occasions. Orphans, widows, spelling mistakes and even at times, the leading and kerning can be a nightmare to see. All of these things are small, and a lot of people wouldn't care about it all, but to those some people who care about type, it's a big deal.

At the end of the day, all they really care about is producing something quick, and shoving every single gossip and news into one magazine no matter how bad the type is taken care of.

Reference.
Adem With an E (Jan 28 2009) Reader's Indigestion. Retrieved May 24 2010. http://www.ademwithane.com/index.php/category/magazine/
New Idea Magazine (2010). Retireved May 24th 2010. http://nz.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/
Womans Day Magazine (2010). Retrieved May 24th 2010. http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/

WordBoner

Wordboner is a website which dedicates there work to quotography, typography and other written material which is all designed in a clean and creative format by founder and owner of the website, Peter Kay. They also produce t-shirts for there designs which sell world wide.

This first design is of the words 'Appealing' and 'Appalling' tied in together. I really like this design because of the use of overlapping, the creativity and crafting behind it and it's simplicity of it all.

The second one is in a the same style as the first one but using the two words, 'Lust' and 'Love' intertwined together. I like the use of colour used in this one with the love in a red/pink hue. I also like how lust is over powering the word love because to me, lust does always overpower love, and in a sense this is what this typographic design is making.

Reference.
WordBoner (2009). Retrieved May 25 2010. http://www.wordboner.com/more
Teepography (2009) Retrieved May 25 201o. http://www.wordbonerstore.com/